More than 30 years ago, our family moved to Jordan to study Arabic. Then on August 2, 1990, Saddam Hussein’s army invaded the country of Kuwait. It brought turmoil to the region and opened an unforeseen opportunity.

After the U.S. retaliated and pushed the Iraqi army from Kuwait, the Kurds of northern Iraq rose up against Saddam. Iraqi soldiers struck back, forcing Kurdish families to flee their homes. In their darkest hour, they ran to the mountains, into the snow, where night after night, the old and the young froze to death.

To rescue the perishing, the United Nations created a safety zone in northern Iraq, hoping to draw the Kurds from the mountains. I proposed to my team in Jordan that we move there. They agreed.

Three days later, we boarded a plane bound for Ankara, Turkey. From there, we took a U.S. military helicopter and flew into Iraq. Then we got on a bus bound for the mountains. When we arrived, we saw U.S. soldiers setting up a tent city for displaced Kurdish families.

“Come back in one hour, and I will return you to the helicopter and you can go home,” the bus driver said. I felt myself lose heart. “God,” I asked, “did you bring us here to look at empty tents and then return home to write to our supporters that we touched Kurdistan for one hour?”

We walked down rows of empty tents and met a man from the State Department. When he found out we spoke Arabic, he asked us to spend the night.

The next morning the first families came down from the mountains. I registered them as they arrived. “What is your name?” I asked each head of household in Arabic. “How many children do you have? Where do you live? Walk over there for your tent assignment.” All morning, all afternoon, every day—until we registered 25,000 refugees in the tent city. When it filled, the soldiers built a second and a third tent city. We had 75,000 people return from the mountains to safety. The United Nations declared it to be one of the most successful efforts to return a displaced people to their homeland.

We never did get back on that bus! And when the Kurds moved back to their neighborhoods, we moved with them. There we lived year after year making disciples among Muslims and glorifying God by doing good in Kurdish communities.

• Praise God for redeeming tragedies and sending Gospel messengers to draw many into the Kingdom.
• Pray for God to use the growing Kurdish church to proclaim the Good News among the nations.
• Pray that Frontiers teams will be primed and ready to move when opportunities arise to serve and love communities in crisis.

Original article: https://frontiersusa.org/blog/rescue-the-perishing